The Patriots' stock has risen and fallen all season with how their defense has played. While their defensive front hasn't been reliable, even after the addition of James Harrison, its secondary has been in a variety of ways.
But in the Super Bowl they will face an offense that has no fear of any secondary. The Eagles just lit up a group that was in contention for having the NFL's best secondary when they destroyed the Vikings 38-7 in the NFC championship. Nick Foles threw for 352 yards on 26 of 33 passsing and three touchdowns with no interceptions against Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes and Harrison Smith.
Let's take a look at how the Eagles' offense will clash with the Patriots' reliable secondary on Sunday:
The Patriots rely on a talented tandem outside the numbers with Malcolm Butler and Stephon Gilmore. Both are aggressive in their hand battles and are experts at playing underneath routes. The biggest challenge they will pose to Foles is how they can jump a pass that is late and/or thrown behind the target.
Watch how Butler, highlighted in yellow, runs with his receiver against the Jets and is underneath the route just enough to intercept the pass. While the receiver did create some separation, Butler was able to stay close enough to force the quarterback to have to be pinpoint accurate. The pass was just a little late and Butler gets the turnover:
Gilmore made the huge play that forced a turnover on downs against the Jaguars last week when he swatted away a deep pass on fourth down. Between him and Butler, the Patriots will be confident in their ability to cover Alshon Jeffrey and Nelson Algohor outside the numbers.
But the other aspect of the Patriots' secondary that could provide Foles a problem is how often they switch their base coverage packages with different looks throughout the game. Matt Patricia loves to call coverage schemes that show one look but then switch to another at the snap of the ball.
This can confuse even veteran franchise quarterbacks, which is probably where the Patriots will hope Foles will falter. Watch an example from their season opener where Trey Flowers gets a sack on Alex Smith. The result is more of a coverage sack as Smith held onto the ball far too long.
Notice the two highlighted safeties, McCourty and Duron Harmon, at the onset of the play. Because of how deep they are lined up to start the play, Smith reasonably assumed that the Patriots were in a Cover 2 scheme. However, once the play developed, the Patriots shifted and only one safety dropped back deep while the other dropped underneath, switching to a Cover 1 scheme.
This freezes Smith in his decision making process and allows the Patriots' front to swarm and get the sack:
Flowers was the leading sack man for the Patriots in 2017, yet he only totaled 6.5 all year. Most came as a result of quarterbacks holding the ball while they tried to discern what the Patriots' secondary was doing. Confusing Foles to get him to hold onto the ball will be the key to giving the Patriots' front time to attack.
The Eagles' offensive line is led by Jason Kelce at center and Lane Johnson at tackle, both of whom will be active in establishing the run and protecting Foles.
But when it comes to establishing the run, the Eagles will be dealing with an unconventional defense in how the Patriots utilize safety Patrick Chung as a makeshift linebacker. Chung is there to help as a cover man, but attacks aggressively when he detects a run in order to compensate for being smaller than offensive linemen, tight ends and fullbacks.
Here's a perfect example when Chung attacked the line of scrimmage and threw everything he had to stunt the fullback, Tommy Bohanon. The attack worked and while he didn't get a tackle on the stat sheet, he closed the hole Leonard Fournette hoped to run through by filling it with him and the fullback, allowing Flowers and Harrison to close in and make the tackle:
The Patriots were able to limit the Jaguars, who led the NFL with 141.4 rushing yards per game, to 101 yards on 32 carries. The Jaguars ground game was primarily led by the power running of Fournette and supplemented with T.J. Yeldon and other backs who weren't used as often.
The Eagles are another of the NFL's top rushing teams, splitting their carries between LaGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi. Whenever people talk about the Patriots and Bill Belichick's defensive exploits, they highlight their focus on taking away an offense's primary weapon.
Against the Jaguars, that weapon was their ground game. The Patriots aggressively attacked the line of scrimmage and put a major emphasis for their supporting safeties to play up against the run. That's why when the Jaguars started to run more on earlier downs in the second half once they had a lead in the AFC championship, the Patriots' defense was often right there to lock up Fournette.
If the Eagles want their running backs to flourish against the Patriots, they will need to use misdirection and other concepts to get opportunities for their backs to win one-on-one in favorable spots against New England defenders.
Fortunately for them, they just did that to the Vikings. Watch how the Eagles use a potential option play between Foles and Ajayi to get Ajayi isolated with Everson Griffen in space. Griffen was one of the NFL's best defensive ends in 2017, but his strength was not playing in space to chase down faster running backs.
Foles' option handoff drew the attention of all but two players for the Vikings, Griffen and Eric Kendricks. Kendricks was matched up with Halapoulivaati Vaitai but got blown off the ball. Griffen, highlighted in yellow, failed to bring down Ajayi and allowed the former Dolphin to gain nine yards:
The Jaguars found success with a similar scheme at times in the AFC championship game. Watch how when Blake Bortles went to hand the ball off to Fournette, it froze the left side of the Patriots' defense and left only five players to go after Fournette. That played into the Jaguars' plan for an option because Fournette could run behind his five offensive linemen and be patient as his opportunity developed.
That's what coaches call "hat on a hat," meaning the offensive line doesn't have to worry about chipping or passing off players, they can just go one-on-one with defensive players and blow them off the ball. That allowed Fournette the space and time to pick his gap and pick up solid yards:
But where the Jaguars found the majority of their success against the Patriots were their play-action passes on first and second downs. Most of it came in the first half when they moved the ball on the Patriots efficiently and found the matchups that worked in their favor.
As stated earlier, the Patriots put their defensive emphasis on stopping the run, which meant that play-action would be the best method to counter their aggressiveness. That's what happened when Bortles faked the handoff to Corey Grant and then went right back to him with a simple pass to the flat that went for 24 yards. Notice how no Patriot accounts for Grant after the fake and the opening presents itself:
Later on that same drive, the Patriots would fall victim to another play-action pass that resulted in a touchdown when Mercedes Lewis caught an easy pass from Bortles for the score. Notice how open he became after his delayed release, but also notice who ended up chasing him too late -- it's Chung:
This is where the Patriots put a serious strain on their defense. Chung is a disciplined player but not an elite athlete who can make plays all over the field or be an ultimate game-changer. McCourty would probably be the closest version to that type of a player when it comes to the three safeties the Patriots field regularly, but he had to play in deep coverage.
The Eagles will need to pick at that weakness in order to expose the Patriots' defense in the right spots. Fortunately they just got done picking at Harrison Smith, arguably the NFL's best safety of 2017, in similar situations. Smith plays in a similar position to Chung for the Vikings and was often put on an island and made to guess in the Eagles' run-pass-option style of offense.
Watch how Foles used play-action to freeze Smith, highlighted in yellow, in order to open up Jeffrey on a slant right behind Smith. The fake froze Smith and forced him to guess where the play was going, opening up the space behind him for the simple pass and conversion:
Where the Jaguars blew their lead to the Patriots -- just like how the Falcons blew theirs in the Super Bowl last year -- was when they stopped attacking through the unexpected methods that the Patriots couldn't key on.
When the Jaguars built their lead against the Patriots they began to use more conventional run schemes without the misdirection or play-action that kept the Patriots' defense on its heels. That allowed for the Patriots' safeties and front to play more downhill and aggressively attack the Jaguars' ground game.
When the Falcons built their lead against the Patriots they did so by attacking with Mohamed Sanu and their running backs instead of their premier receiver, Julio Jones. But when push came to shove late in the game, Matt Ryan started to stare down Jones on almost every passing play and played right into the Patriots' hands.
If the Eagles want to stand a chance in this game they will have to use various methods of misdirection in order to keep the Patriots' defense guessing and prevent them from attacking gaps in the ground game with abandon. If they build a lead it will be vital for them to maintain that sort of pace with option runs, fake reverses, play-action passes and screens in order to keep New England guessing.
Carter's Classroom will cover how Tom Brady can attack the Eagles' defense this Friday.